Here in blue state America, in the last weeks before the November
election, there is premature elation, regime change is in the air.
Panic among Republicans is palpable as they sink in the polls and
face the fury of hometown constituents disgusted that a
now-disgraced ex-congressman was protected by a Republican
leadership who put a sexual predator in charge of the House Caucus
on Missing and Exploited Children. The same moral majority who
recently tried to impeach a Democratic president for consensual sex
with a more-than-willing adult, are now shaken to the core of their
Christian family values.
Didn't they just win an election using gay marriage as a wedge
issue, manufactured by their strategist Karl Rove? Rove, according to
James Moore and Wayne Slater's new book "The Architect", hit the
2004 campaign trail with a vengeance after privately burying his gay
stepfather who ran off with another man when Karl was about to
graduate from high school, abandoning Karl's mother who later
committed suicide.
If all politics are local, perhaps they're personal too, driven by
demons that deliberately separate one American from another. We
alone among the democracies decide our elections on social issues
that have little to do with politics. We render unto God what is
God's and unto Caesar what is God's as well. The pulpit is in the
parliament here. Unlike citizens who "suffer" a higher standard of
living in "socialist" Canada and Europe, who pay their taxes and
expect their representatives to actually deliver services, we in America fret over
other women's wombs, gays at the alter, flags aflame, school
kids persecuted for praying, Mexicans stealing our jobs and liberal
judges coddling terrorists.
Lately elections have become a choice between fear and
fecklessness, so as Halloween approaches be afraid, be very
afraid. This is because Republican dirty tricksters have 60 million dollars to
dump into negative advertising and untold amounts for voter
suppression. But this time, reality is beginning to bite back.
According to Bob Woodward's explosive new book, "State of Denial",
Iraq is the last thing President Bush wants the American people to
know about. Although in the real world Iraq is over and lost, and
apart from Henry Kissinger, most Americans want the agony to end.
Yet the Democrats, including prominent presidential hopefuls who
voted for Bush's war, have somehow allowed Bush's blunder to become
their problem. They vaguely talk of alternative strategies, as if
we had any options.
So who is listening as the White House shrieks and scares,
whistling past the graveyard, and castigating those who would "cut n' run"? This, while our
boys and girls lose life and limbs for a cause their
Commander-in-chief can't explain. Maybe, Mister President,
name-calling won't cut it this time. Iraq is toast and so are you
if it stays in the headlines. That's why W is up there on the
political front line, he can't lose one or both houses in November
because the Democrats would have subpoena power. And Bush has something to hide.
Instead of investigating steroids in sports, a new Congress would
exercise checks and balances and go after the contractors and
cronies who alone profited from W's trillion dollar disaster that
has undermined our security, divided us from our friends, rewarded
and emboldened our enemies, broken our Army, Marines and Reserves,
moved a renewed Al Qaeda a thousand miles closer and put the world's
energy lifeline in jeopardy.
Little wonder the President wants to change the subject to the war
on terror, but again Woodward's book exposes the other big lie. The
second to last thing the White House wants the American people to
look at is the White House's culpability for 9/11, how they brushed
off repeated dire warnings.
But here the White House is rescued by our country's growing and
pervasive ignorance, paranoia and superstition, both on the left
and the right. On the right, 60 million evangelicals welcomed 9/11,
they want our world to end in burning flesh so that their world can
begin. They don't just want a clash of civilizations, they pray for
the big one, Armageddon and the rapture, and they expect their
leader who talks to their God, to deliver.
Meanwhile, largely on the navel-gazing left, 36% of Americans
believe Bush had a hidden hand in 9/11. In other words, the
incompetents who brought you Iraq and Katrina, pulled off the
greatest conspiracy of all time. Who shot JFK, RFK and MLK pales beside
this clever cabal's coup in plain sight.
But, on the other hand, conspiracies do happen, and I'm told by sources
involved that our Special Forces are already in Iran preparing for
a pre-emptive strike, not against nuclear targets, but against the
mullahs and their Revolutionary Guards. Trick or treat? Regime
decapitation from invisible B2's, with smart bombs sent by dumb
leaders, surgically guided by lasers on the ground to smite evil in
an October surprise. Another quick victory followed by a slow
defeat from our wartime president who wins elections but loses wars.